"So what we seemed to find is, if we pick a corner like 130R, compared to our immediate competitors, even though that corner is flat-out, we never recover on the exit of the corner.

"We drop two tenths in that one corner. It's like Turn 3 in Barcelona, Turn 3 in Russia... those types of corner are particularly painful.

"And with this track now being a bigger percentage full-throttle, particularly towards the end of the first sector, accelerating out of the two Degners, out of the hairpin, around into the last sector... we see it's pretty painful there.

"We gave away in qualifying the best part of a second.

"The chassis has been strong all weekend, we can see from the GPS overlays that the chassis is right there.

"And obviously [Mercedes and Ferrari] can't run in the high power modes for that duration during the race."

Horner said that the nature of the corners at Suzuka meant that any power deficit was punished more than normal.

"Ultimately it's power, because as soon as you put a little bit of scrub, the engine isn't able to pull through," he said. "It's very sensitive to its acceleration at that point.

"Whereas if you've got the power, you can see that Mercedes and Ferrari are running more downforce than us.

"They're running a monkey seat, a deeper rear wing, and still their speed is extremely impressive."